The Greenbelt encompasses…

The Greenbelt encompasses many environmentally important species and ecosystems which, among other benefits, help keep Ontario's water (eg. Oak Ridges Moraine helps filter water, which helps keep the costs and efforts of water treatment plants lower) and air clean.

It is also critical for Ontario's climate resilience, as it helps mitigate the impacts of weather extremes (like floods due to torrential rains, for example) and grow food locally, which means Ontarians' food has a lower carbon footprint than it would otherwise.

Additionally, the Greenbelt provides Ontarians in the Golden Horseshoe, which is growing rapidly, with access to nature, which is well-documented to have mental and physical health benefits.

For these reasons, parcels of land in the Greenbelt, because of their individual locations and unique ecologies, are not simply interchangeable with other tracts of land in different locations, as each provides different benefits to the people of the province.

While Ontario needs to build much more housing to keep up with our population growth due to years of undersupply, the Golden Horseshoe is better served by incentivizing the densification of existing built areas. Ending single family zoning and investing in improving public transit would both be better options for Ontarians, allowing people to remain in their communities, be near existing services, and depend less on cars, which contribute to Canada's outsized contribution to global greenhouse emissions per capita.

The current Government, prior to coming to power, committed to not touching the Greenbelt. This proposal is not only a betrayal of that promise, but also a short-sighted plan. In the long run, the proposed changes will result in a decrease in Ontarians' quality of life by:
- increasing the costs of adapting to climate change by removing some of our natural capacity to absorb extreme weather patterns, and by allowing construction in areas more likely to be affected by things like flooding or derechos/tornadoes
- increasing Ontario's contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions both by contributing to sprawl and by reducing the vegetation and natural environments that are able to absorb some of those emissions
- reducing access to nature for some Ontarians, negatively affecting their health. The proposed new additions are located in a significantly less accessible location for many Ontarians (both by car and by public transit), especially those east of the 427, who will be the ones losing most of the existing areas, making them the most negatively affected.

I wholeheartedly disagree with this proposal and hope it is withdrawn.